The Last Days of Marilyn Monroe

by Donald H. Wolfe

  Jefferies recalled that on August 4, he had planned on leaving earlier in the day. He was loading tools into his truck when Eunice Murray came out of the house and told him that she had been dismissed: “I wasn’t aware of a big disagreement between Eunice and Marilyn, but Eunice said she had been told by Marilyn to pack her things and leave. Marilyn expected Eunice to be gone by the end of the day. So I agreed to stay on and help her pack and get her things together. I asked Eunice if it meant that I had been fired too, and she said I’d have to ask Marilyn, but Marilyn had gone to her room.” Murray had called Dr. Greenson, but he wasn’t able to come over and mediate the problem until later in the day. Murray’s car was being serviced, so Jefferies began putting Eunice’s belongings into his truck.

  Jefferies stated that sometime between three and four in the afternoon Robert Kennedy arrived with Peter Lawford. Though Marilyn had told Pat Newcomb she was no longer welcome, she was still at the house when the attorney general and Lawford arrived.

  “Mr. Lawford made it very clear that he wanted Eunice and I [sic] out of there, and he told us to go to the market. He gave me some money and said to buy some Cokes. When we came back—maybe it was an hour later—their car was gone, and when we went into the house Marilyn was hysterical and looked awful. Something terrible had happened—she was scared out of her mind.”

  Newcomb tried to calm Marilyn, but there was nothing she could say or do. “It’s something I’ll never forget,” Jefferies stated. “Marilyn was having this hysterical rage. It was like nothing I’ve ever seen. She was scared and at the same time she was terribly angry.” Murray then called Dr. Greenson for the second time that day, conveyed that it was urgent, and Greenson said he’d be right over.

  Jefferies’s revelations were corroborated by Sidney Guilaroff. In 1984, Guilaroff told Anthony Summers he had spoken to Marilyn on that Saturday, but he refused to reveal the contents of the conversation beyond saying that Marilyn was “upset and depressed.” In a 1995 interview he stated for the first time that he had spoken to Marilyn twice on Saturday. The first occasion was in the late afternoon or early evening. “Marilyn telephoned me and was in an absolute state,” Guilaroff said. “She was in tears, and I had difficulty understanding her. After I calmed her down and said something like, ‘Now, what’s the matter, dear?’ she said ‘Bobby Kennedy was here, and he threatened me, screamed at me, and pushed me around!’ I think I said something like ‘What was Robert Kennedy doing at your house?’ because I couldn’t believe my ears. I knew absolutely nothing about her affair with Bobby, and I thought I knew everything. I knew about Jack, but she told me she had an affair with Bobby as well as Jack, and everything had gone wrong. Now she was afraid and felt she was in terrible danger. Bobby felt she had become a problem and had said to her, ‘If you threaten me, Marilyn, there’s more than one way to keep you quiet.’” After Marilyn had calmed down and became more coherent, Guilaroff suggested she should get some rest and they would talk again later in the evening.

  Guilaroff’s revelation coincides with statements made by Fred Otash to the Los Angeles Times and his suppressed interview on ABC’s 20/20. Otash stated that the surveillance tapes recorded a running quarrel between Marilyn and Bobby Kennedy as they moved from room to room during their violent quarrel: “Marilyn and Bobby had a very violent argument and she told him, ‘I feel used; I feel passed around.’” Earl Jaycox, Bernard Spindel’s assistant, confirmed that they were shouting at each other. Marilyn was screaming, while Kennedy was yelling, “Where is it? Where is it?” She shouted that she was being treated “like a piece of meat.”

  In 1985, Anthony Summers was led by NBC News executive Mark Monsky to a government contact who had heard some forty minutes of the Otash-Spindel tapes, all of it covering activity at Marilyn’s home on the day she died. The tape recorder had been sound-activated and revealed two visits by Robert Kennedy. On the first visit Summers’s source related, “You could hear Marilyn and Kennedy talking. It was kind of echoey and at a distance, as though the sound was in a room next to the site of the transmitter, perhaps in some sort of hallway.” The tiled entry of Marilyn’s home was in fact just beyond her bedroom. The tape then recorded the conversation turning into a heated argument. “Their voices grew louder and louder,” he recalled. “They were arguing about something that had been promised by Robert Kennedy. As they argued, their voices got shriller. If I had not recognized RFK’s voice already, I’m not sure that I would have known it was him at this point. He was screeching, high-pitched, like an old lady.” It became evident that Kennedy was looking for something: “He was asking again and again, ‘Where is it? Where the fuck is it?’”

  Summers’s source told him he wouldn’t have identified the third voice on the tape, but had been told it was the voice of Peter Lawford. Lawford was saying, “Calm down! Calm down!” and he recalled Robert Kennedy saying words to the effect, “We have to know. It’s important to the family. We can make any arrangements you want!” The voices then came closer to the location of the transmitter. “There was a clack, clack, clack on the tape which Bernie said he thought was coat hangers being pushed along a rail…and there was a banging and flopping sound…. Monroe was screaming at them, and ordering them out of the house.” The episode ended with the sound of a door slamming.*

  Dr. Greenson stated that he arrived at Marilyn’s between 4:30 and 5 P.M. Three different stories were given as the reason for his visit: First, Mrs. Murray told the police and the press that she called the doctor because of Marilyn’s oxygen inquiry. A second story was told by Greenson in a letter to Norman Rosten. Greenson stated. “I received a call from Marilyn about four-thirty in the afternoon. She seemed somewhat depressed and somewhat drugged. I went over to her place. She was still angry with her girlfriend [Pat Newcomb] who had slept fifteen hours that night, and Marilyn was furious because she had had such a poor sleep. But after I had spent about two and a half hours with her she seemed to quiet down.” Greenson told a different story to the suicide squad’s Dr. Norman Tabachnick. Greenson related that Marilyn “had been close to some very important men in government and that she had been expecting one of them that night.” She had called Greenson when she learned the meeting was off. “Marilyn died,” Greenson said, “feeling rejected by some of the people she had been close to.”

  The truth regarding Greenson’s visit was clarified by Norman Jefferies. After being told to leave by Lawford when he had arrived in midafternoon with Bobby Kennedy, Jefferies and Eunice Murray returned at approximately 4:30 P.M. to find Marilyn in a hysterical state. Mrs. Murray then called Dr. Greenson.

  Greenson stated he arrived between four-thirty and five, which was confirmed by both Murray and Newcomb. Undoubtedly, Mrs. Murray briefed him on the disturbing events of the afternoon before he entered Marilyn’s room. He found Marilyn to be despondent, angry, and afraid.

  According to Mrs. Murray, while Dr. Greenson was in Marilyn’s bedroom, she and Newcomb were in the living room. “Then Dr. Greenson came out into the living room and said to Pat, ‘Are you leaving, Pat?’ And Pat just got up and walked out. I wouldn’t even want to guess how to account for this, but that’s what I observed…. I know that Pat wasn’t too happy about it.”

  George “Bullets” Durgom, a dinner guest that evening at Peter Lawford’s, observed Newcomb at Lawford’s beach house, where she had apparently driven sometime later. Durgom stated, “The one thing I remember clearly is Pat Newcomb coming in at maybe nine o’clock. She stood on the step and said, ‘Peter, Marilyn’s not coming. She’s not feeling well.’”

  Ralph Roberts stated that he called Marilyn’s private telephone number at about six-thirty. “A man answered the phone. I knew it was Dr. Greenson; I recognized his voice.” Roberts recalled that he sounded strangely intense. “I asked for Marilyn and he said, ‘She’s not in right now!’” It occurred to Roberts that it was unusual that Marilyn’s psychiatrist had answered her phone and then said she wasn’t in. He wondered what the doctor was doing there
if Marilyn wasn’t home. Roberts left his name and a message for Marilyn to call him.

  In a letter Greenson wrote to Dr. Marianne Kris on August 20, 1962, he amplified on his visit to Marilyn that afternoon. Dr. Greenson wrote of Marilyn’s decision to “terminate her therapy” and stated, “I was aware that she was somewhat annoyed with me. She often became annoyed when I did not absolutely and wholeheartedly agree [with her]…. She was angry with me. I told her we would talk more, that she should call me Sunday morning.”

  Greenson’s visit concluded at approximately 7 P.M., and he suggested that she take some Nembutal and get a good night’s sleep. He told Mrs. Murray to stay overnight, though her belongings were packed. At Murray’s request, Norman Jefferies stayed on into the evening. Jefferies recalled that his mother-in-law was unnerved by the day’s events, and he watched television with her, while Marilyn remained in her room.

  In her last hours, Marilyn turned to her friend the telephone. She had spoken earlier at some length to Sidney Guilaroff about Bobby’s visit, and according to Peter Lawford’s guests Joe and Dolores Naar, it was approximately seven-thirty when Marilyn called during dinner, and Peter casually returned to the table and said, “Oh, that’s just Marilyn again.” Undoubtedly, Marilyn had something to say to Peter other than, “Say good-bye to the president” and “You’re a nice guy.” Her burning comments may still be smoldering in a CIA surveillance file.

  At approximately the same time, Joe DiMaggio, Jr., called and had a lively discussion with Marilyn about his girlfriend. According to DiMaggio, “They spoke for about fifteen minutes and Marilyn seemed quite normal and in good spirits.”

  “It was between eight and eight-thirty that I spoke once again with Marilyn,” Sidney Guilaroff stated. “She was feeling much better and had met with her psychiatrist, Dr. Greenson, who I frankly detested. I tried to diffuse her anxieties about her argument with Robert Kennedy, and I think now that I’d totally misunderstood the situation. I dismissed it then as merely a lover’s quarrel. We planned on talking again the next day, and I suggested we drive up to the Holiday Inn and talk the whole thing over. She ended the conversation with the provoking comment, ‘You know, Sidney, I know a lot of secrets about the Kennedys.’

  ‘What kind of secrets?’ I asked.

  ‘Dangerous ones,’ she said, and then hung up.

  Jeanne Carmen said that Marilyn called her close to nine o’clock that evening. It was Marilyn’s third call that day. “Are you sure you can’t come over?” Marilyn inquired. Jeanne Carmen again declined, saying she was tired. She said, “Marilyn sounded nervous and afraid.” Jeanne has always regretted not responding to the need she detected in Marilyn’s voice in their last conversation.

  Marilyn’s wealthy New York friend Henry Rosenfeld telephoned her close to 9 P.M., California time. They discussed her projected theater party in September and he said, “She sounded groggy, but that wasn’t unusual.”

  It had been a long and exhausting day. Though she had drawn the blackout curtains, she left the front windows open. Outside, it was still sultry. During the Southern California midsummer, the evening light remains in the sky well after sundown. But soon it would be night and the crescent moon would rise.

  Shortly after dusk, three men walked down Fifth Helena Drive. One was carrying a small black satchel similar to a medical bag. Elizabeth Pollard, a neighbor of Marilyn’s, often asked a group of friends over on Saturday evening to play cards. Several months after Marilyn’s death, they told Police Sergeant Jack Clemmons that “they saw Kennedy go into Marilyn’s house just after dusk. They were sitting playing bridge and Bobby Kennedy walked right by the window on his way into Marilyn’s house.”

  The women told Clemmons that the attorney general had two other men with him. However, in 1962, Elizabeth Pollard’s story was discredited by the police and the district attorney as an aberration. The official story, backed up by FBI documents, was that Bobby Kennedy was not in Los Angeles that day. Elizabeth Pollard has since passed away, but a recent interview with Betty Pollard, Elizabeth’s daughter, reconfirmed her mother’s statement.

  Marilyn’s private phone rang shortly after nine-thirty. It was a welcome voice—José Bolaños. He had recently returned to Los Angeles to see Marilyn and was calling from a bar in Santa Monica Canyon. Revealing only that Marilyn told him “something shocking—something that will one day shock the whole world,” Bolaños added that during the conversation Marilyn left the phone. She didn’t hang up, but she put the telephone down while he waited for her to return. She never came back.

  There was a commotion at the door, and Marilyn went to see what it was.

  Norman Jefferies recalled that between 9:30 and 10 P.M., Robert Kennedy, accompanied by two men, appeared at the door. They ordered Jefferies and Murray from the house. “We were told to leave. I mean they made it clear we were to be gone. But this time Eunice and I didn’t leave the neighborhood. We went to a neighbor’s house. I had no idea what was going on. I mean, this was the attorney general of the United States. I didn’t know who the two men were with him. I assumed they were some sort of government men. We waited at the neighbor’s house for them to leave.” Jefferies may have been referring to the neighbors to the west, Mr. and Mrs. Abe Landau. But the Landaus insist they were out that evening until at least eleven. Jefferies may have been referring to the nearby home of Hanna Fenichel on Third Helena Drive.

  According to the Naars, it was approximately ten-thirty when Peter Lawford received Marilyn’s alarming call, when she lapsed into unconsciousness. Lawford then called back to find that both lines were off the hook, with no conversation taking place. Lawford then called the Naars in a panic and asked Joe Naar to find out what was wrong.

  At about ten-thirty Murray and Jefferies saw Bobby and the two men leave. Jefferies stated that he and Murray then ventured back to Marilyn’s. As they entered the open gates and crossed the courtyard toward the kitchen door, they heard Maf barking from the guest cottage, where the light was on and the door was standing open. When they entered the cottage, they discovered Marilyn, unclothed, lying across the daybed.

  “I thought she was dead,” Jefferies stated. “She was facedown, her hand kind of holding the phone. It didn’t look to me like she was breathing, and her color was awful—like she was dead. Eunice took the phone and called an ambulance. Then she put through an emergency call to Dr. Greenson, who was someplace nearby and said he would be right over. He told Eunice to call Dr. Engelberg,” Jefferies continued. “I went to the gates to wait for the ambulance, but before the ambulance got there Peter Lawford and Pat Newcomb arrived. Pat became hysterical and started screaming at Eunice. I had to take Eunice into the house. She was a basket case. I think the ambulance arrived before Dr. Greenson.”

  Jefferies’s revelation corroborates the disclosures of Schaefer ambulance driver James Hall, who had stated he was only minutes away when he and his partner Murray Liebowitz received the Code Three call to the Monroe residence. Hall had identified the hysterical woman as Pat Newcomb and placed Peter Lawford and Dr. Greenson at the scene.

  Hall confirmed finding Marilyn in a comatose state on the bed in the guest cottage, stating that they placed her on her back on the cottage floor in order to attempt resuscitation. When Dr. Greenson arrived, he ordered the removal of the resuscitator and directed Hall to “apply positive pressure,” or CPR. Greenson then attempted to inject adrenaline directly into her heart in order to revive her, but the needle hit a rib. Hall said Marilyn succumbed moments later.

  “After that all hell broke loose,” Jefferies stated. “It was horrible. I was in the living room with Eunice when Marilyn died, and we could hear Pat Newcomb screaming, and we knew Marilyn was dead. After that there were police cars, fire trucks, more ambulances—you name it! A police helicoptor landed at the golf course and soon they were all over the place.”

  Dr. Engelberg arrived close to midnight and Marilyn’s body was moved from the floor of the guest cottage to her bedroom in the m
ain house. Jefferies stated that the “locked room” suicide scenario was formulated by the plainclothes officials who had arrived soon after Marilyn’s death. According to Jefferies, at one time 12305 Helena Drive was swarming with at least a dozen plainclothes officers—then suddenly they were gone. He had no idea who they were.

  The officer in charge was later identified by Billy Woodfield and several former LAPD officers as Bobby Kennedy’s friend Captain James Hamilton of the Los Angeles Police Department Intelligence Division, and the two men who had accompanied Bobby Kennedy to Marilyn’s house that night were identified as two detectives assigned to Kennedy as security officers.

  Did they intend to murder Marilyn Monroe? Or was the intent to subdue her with a “hot shot” if she caused any problems while they broke into her file cabinet in the guest cottage; took the notes, letters, and legal documents; and searched for the book of secrets? The evidence points to premeditated homicide. In the presence of Bobby Kennedy, she was injected with enough barbiturate to kill fifteen people.

  Before dawn on Sunday, August 5, 1962, a warm wind swept off the Mojave Desert and rushed into the Los Angeles basin, swaying the tall trees that formed a curtain of privacy around the Brentwood home of Marilyn Monroe. Antique wind chimes that had been the gift of poet Carl Sandburg softly tolled in the darkness. Strange sounds had been carried on the wind during the night—shouting and the crash of broken glass. Neighbors reported that a hysterical woman had yelled, “Murderers! You murderers! Are you satisfied now that she’s dead?”

  Mr. and Mrs. Abe Landau, who lived to the immediate west of Marilyn Monroe, had returned home from a dinner party late Saturday evening and had seen an ambulance and a police car parked in the cul-de-sac in front of the film star’s residence. Near midnight neighbors heard a helicopter hovering overhead. There were other strange sights and sounds before dawn as the city slept. In the crush of time and extremity the film star’s home was carefully rearranged, telephone records were seized, papers and notes were destroyed—and a frantic phone call was placed to the White House.